Lookout app snaps a picture of any thief breaking into your phone

Included within a recent update to the Lookout Security & Antivirus application for Android devices, a new feature called the Lock Cam will use a device’s front-facing camera to take a photo of someone that attempts to break into your smartphone or tablet. After three attempts to crack your password, the Lookout application takes a picture of the culprit and sends an email to the owner. Besides the picture of the thief, the email also includes the current GPS location of the smartphone. The Lock cam feature does require front-facing camera hardware, Android 2.3 or higher as well as the Android lock screen engaged.

For additional data, users can log into the Lookout site and view the entire location history of the Android mobile device in order to look for patterns. If the user is near the lost device, they can remotely trigger a loud alarm in order to find the exact location.

Premium features of the application include the ability to remotely lock the phone and including a custom message encouraging the thief to return the phone as well as the ability to remotely erase all data from the smartphone in order to protect personal communication and financial information.

Beyond physical security, the application also includes software security as well as data management tools. The Lookout application will actively scan for forms of spyware and viruses that are built into other applications or suspicious email attachments. In addition, the data backup function will routinely save your most recent contact list as well as restore all contacts to the same smartphone or tablet in case of data loss. Premium features allow the user to backup photos as well as the call history and initiate a data transfer to a new Android-based smartphone or tablet.

Other popular tracking applications for Android devices include Prey, Plan B and Google Latitude. You can check out more smartphone tracking tips here.